hms iron duke

Thursday, 15 March 2018

Geneva, Switzerland.
15 March. Prime Minister Theresa May’s statement to the House of Commons
yesterday on the Skripal attack was proportionate given the status of the
investigation and the need for an initial response. The 15 March use of the
Russian nerve agent Novichok in the
English provincial city of Salisbury during the attempted murder of one Russian
citizen and another former Russian turned Briton is an outrageous act of
aggression that must be countered.The next
step is to consider a subsequent and consequent set of responses. Yesterday, I
was contacted by a senior figure at NATO and asked what I would suggest the
Alliance should do in support of the UK. Given that NATO is likely to be in the
vanguard of the international response my considered reaction is set out below.

Investigation
and Action

In the wake
of this attack, a thorough investigation must necessarily form the basis for
action. The aim of any response must be to assert that NATO will respond to any
attack on an ally in a robust but proportionate manner and to uphold
international regimes and law relating to the use of biological and chemical
weapons.May’s decision to expel 23
Russian ‘diplomats’ from London as part of a suite of measures is just such a
proportionate response. She cleverly left open the option to escalate to
further measures if and when the available evidence hardens as to the source of
the attack, whilst offering Moscow the chance to climb-down by ‘admitting’ it
had lost control of the nerve agent.

The response must
be further divided into two distinct tracks – investigation and action.The investigation would see NATO in support
of the British seeking to establish exactly the sequence of events that led to
the attack and identify those who designed and carried out the attack. Whilst
there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence that Russia, in some capacity, is
responsible for the attack the legitimacy of any subsequent response will be strengthened
if due process has been seen to have been followed.

Specifically,
it would be useful to set up two expert panels, one under the auspices of the
Organisation for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (OPCW), and another conducted
by NATO allies, possibly led by France which has a similar capability to
Britain in countering chemical and biological hazards. Past experience would
suggest that Russia will doubtless try to interfere with such an investigation
and such efforts will need to be resisted.Equally, prior to the 2003 Iraq War London was not sufficiently skeptical
about Iraq’s supposed WMD capability and locked itself into a political position
from which it could not retreat.

The
Maintenance of Proportionality

There has
been some suggestion that NATO triggers the cornerstone collective defence Article
5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, the so-called doomsday article the invoking of
which during the Cold War would almost inevitably have led to nuclear
Armageddon. At this stage, such a response would be disproportionate given the scale
of the attack and thus enable Moscow to suggest the Alliance is the
aggressor.On the eve of Sunday’s Russian
presidential elections, it may well be that the Kremlin would like nothing more
than to suggest to the Russian people that Russia is under attack from NATO. Given
the extremely high likelihood that Moscow was involved in the attack it may
also be that triggering such a response by the Alliance was central to the political
design of the attack.

To invoke
Article 5 would also devalue its importance and thus the gravity of its
invocation in a crisis. In a sense, the Alliance is already preparing a
response that is in the spirit of Article 5. The North Atlantic Council has met
and offered its support to Britain re-iterating that an attack on one ally is
an attack on all. NATO has also confirmed Britain’s right to self-defence under
Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. The attack has been reported to the
United Nations Security Council and the Alliance is considering the subsequent and
proportionate action it could take.

NATO Action?

Proportionality
does not preclude the preparation of a robust and timely set of actions to
deter Russia, or any other state actor, from ever again contemplating such an
attack on a NATO ally. Indeed, even if due process has yet to be completed it
is reasonable for the Alliance to assume the identity of the attacker and
prepare measured and appropriate responses. There is a range of actions I have
proposed that would provide a credible considered escalation in the wake of
such an attack and thus reinforce deterrence:

Reinforce the agenda of the NATO Brussels Summit: The Alliance should immediately introduce onto the agenda of the
July 2018 Brussels Summit an assessment of the threat posed by what appears to
be illegal Russian use of chemical weapons.Such a debate should also perhaps take place in the context of Moscow’s
deployment of new nuclear weapons systems that are illegal under the 1987
Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Better coordinate and share intelligence: Prevention of attacks on the Alliance’s civilian population would
be best facilitated by an effective intelligence-led defence.Efforts are underway within NATO to improve
such co-operation but if such intelligence is to be properly actionable the Alliance
needs to become far more effective at gathering, collating and distributing
intelligence.

Re-establish effective consequence management: Most NATO allies have lost the ability to quickly identify and
thus respond quickly to biological and chemical attack on either military or
civilian targets.In close conjunction
with the allies, NATO must move to close that gap in its defences. One idea
could be to create bespoke quick response teams of experts that could support
national authorities in the wake of a biological or chemical weapons attack.

Instigate a strategic review of Alliance defence and deterrence: A vital question NATO needs to answer is this: in the face of a
new concept of coercion how can the Alliance’s citizen be defended against an
adversarial strategy that combines disruption, destabilisation, and destruction?
Such a review would consider the implications of such an attack across the new
spectrum of warfare that Moscow is purposefully engineering and which extends
to and weaponises information, cyber, biology, chemistry, space, as well as the
eventual or parallel use of conventional and nuclear forces.

Make the Alliance more resilient: The Alliance as a whole must now properly consider how to make
critical structures and infrastructures upon which society depends to function
far more resilient to an attack. The Salisbury attack might be small in scale
but it implied the ease with which a perpetrator could inflict mass casualties
on a NATO ally without the use of nuclear weapons.

Enhance NATO’s Enhance Forward Presence: The threat the Alliance is facing involves an adversary who is
merging hybrid, cyber and hyper warfare into a new concept of warfare. Therefore, it is impossible at this stage to
know if the Salisbury attack was a one-off or part of some new form of conflict
escalation.It would thus be prudent to
strengthen the military defences of the most vulnerable allies Estonia, Latvia
and Lithuania.

Accelerate NATO force mobility: NATO
is already considering how to better facilitate its ability to move forces
across the Alliance in an emergency and how best to reinforce its forces in
Europe from across the Atlantic. This attack underlines the importance of that
work and the reform of the NATO Command Structure.

Close the NATO deterrence Gap: By
deploying short and intermediate range nuclear systems in Europe Russia is both
skilful and illegal.The aim is exploiting
a clear gap in Alliance deterrence between NATO’s conventional force and its strategic
nuclear forces and thus enhance Moscow’s ability to intimidate allies in a
crisis. As I written in these pages before, NATO must actively consider the
role of new technologies in closing that deterrence gap using non-nuclear
capabilities without joining Moscow in the destruction of treaty-based
security.

Power Politics,
Russia & Salisbury

When, and
frankly from what I have been told it is a question of ‘when’, Russia is confirmed
as the perpetrator of the Salisbury attack it will be but the latest of a now long-line
of flagrant and blatant flouting of international regimes and law by the
Kremlin. Let me be clear; I have a deep respect for Russia and I am firm in my
belief there can be no security in Europe without Russia.My desire is to seek an accommodation with
Russia via dialogue to establish a new peaceful order in Europe with which Russia
is comfortable and from which Russians benefit.

Russia is
also a great power and must be respected as such. However, the attack on my
country was an attack on other great power with an economy roughly twice the
size of Russia’s.If Russia really has
abandoned a rules-based international order in favour of the anarchy that is
geopolitics democracies likes Britain will respond. Like all democracies, there
has been a time-lag in that response but when it comes Moscow will quickly
discover that whilst Russia might be a great power it is no longer a
superpower.In any such struggle, Russia
will lose unless the Kremlin is mad enough to even contemplate that it could
win another European war.

Therefore,
whilst Britain and the NATO allies must follow due process, for such process is
in effect what divides the Putin regime from its neighbours, and never stop seeking
dialogue with Russia, the Kremlin must be under no doubt that the NATO allies accept
that the Novichok attack on a quiet
provincial English city was both an attack upon them all and an egregious act
of aggression that must not and cannot go unpunished. If they do not such
weakness would mark the beginning of the end of NATO…something the Kremlin no
doubt will also have considered at some length.

Thursday, 8 March 2018

Alleged 2013 comment by Dmitry Peskov, Official Spokesman of
President Putin

The Skripal attack

Alphen,
Netherlands. 8 March. Let me assume that in some manner or other the Russian
state or those close to it were behind the poisoning of former Russian GRU (military
intelligence) officer, Sergei Skripal, his daughter, and a Wiltshire police
officer in Salisbury last Sunday.Moscow
will, of course, publicly deny all and any involvement in the attack, even as
it leaves open the chance for people (particularly its own) to draw their own
conclusions.So, what options does
Britain really have if it is to respond ‘robustly’, as Foreign Secretary Boris
Johnson somewhat theatrically suggested in Parliament this week?

Why attack Britain?

First, why attack
Britain?If the attack was sanctioned at
a high level in the Kremlin the consequences would have been carefully
considered.It is unlikely that Moscow
would risk such an attack on the United States, given the consequences if an
American police officer was infected in a similar fashion to that unfortunate
British police officer.Moscow is also
unlikely to have sanctioned such an attack on Germany, France or, Italy as all have
shown themselves sympathetic and/or understanding of Moscow in the past.Indeed, their collective refusal to back
Britain in the wake of the 2006 Russian attack in London on Alexander
Litvinenko in which highly-radioactive Polonium
210 not only killed Mr Litvinenko, and which put many Londoners at risk,
demonstrated all too clearly the fragility of European solidarity.It also demonstrated just how ‘uncommon’ the
EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy really is at times of crisis.The Baltic States are already under daily
attack from Moscow across a range of forms and means.The rest of Europe?Too small and insignificant to send the
message Moscow might wish to send to the Russian people on the eve of the
presidential elections about Russia’s ability to cower enemies and punish traitors.
Therefore, Russia’s much self-reduced and
vulnerable old Cold War foe Britain, with a now sad ‘tradition’ of spinelessness
in the face of a host of similar such attacks in recent years, thus presents
the perfect target.

Second, the
attack might involve the sending my Moscow of more than one message.On such occasions one needs to think somewhat
laterally because the circumstances that inevitably surround cases of espionage
are inevitably murky, with the public utterances of government often hiding a
whole other story. Certainly, I am (again) angered by the prospect that (again)
the Kremlin, one of its agencies (the fearsome GRU?), or one of the factions
close to President Putin, seems to have carried out another possibly deadly
attack on British soil. Equally, I am curious at the coincidence that such an
attack should take place in Salisbury, just next door to Britain’s highly-secretive
Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). Could it be that Skripal, who
betrayed Russia, was the unwitting messenger in some other hidden conflict
between Moscow and London?

Hinting at
just such a conflict General Sir Chris Deverell, Britain’s Joint Force
Commander, said this week that Russia has developed the ability to cripple a
dangerously open Britain, particularly via a cyber-attack. Cryptically and coincidentally
Deverell also said that Moscow “did not care about civilian life…They care only
about what is in the interests of their elites…They are quite capable of
anything”.Was that the message Moscow
was sending London?

Retaliation?

Britain now
knows the specific nerve agent used in the attack.Given the sophisticated nature of the
compound it is likely to be only a matter of time before the British identify
the source of the attack, no doubt with the help of the Americans. So, let me
break Britain’s possible responses down into two parts: retaliation and policy.

London’s
immediate responses to such an attack would need to be necessarily and
consequently theatrical. In addition to issuing pointless indictments against
those Russians London identifies as suspects, Britain would first likely
withdraw its ambassador from Moscow and/or expel a host of Russian diplomats, as
well as declare a few Belgravia oligarchs persona
non grata. However, with the Russian
presidential elections nine days away President Putin would probably be only too
happy to expel a similar number of British diplomats to demonstrate graphically
to the Russian people the ‘real’ enemies of the Russian state.

London might also
seek to increase the severity of the sanctions on Russia imposed in the aftermath
of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the July 2014 shooting down of Malaysian Airlines
MH17.However, it would be pointless for
Britain to do that on its own.And, as
in the aftermath of the Litvinenko case, it is likely that only the United
States (or possibly not!) might be willing to join Britain.Of Europe’s major powers Germany’s Russia
policy is far too tied up with Berlin’s economic interests to consider further
sanctions against Russia, particularly the Nordstream
2 pipeline.France at times talks
tough about Russia but is similarly ambivalent, and Italy has just seen the
political influence of pro-Russian Silvio Berlusconi markedly increase.

Even Britain
is ambivalent about its own sanctions on the Russian elite.The City of London represents 11% of the
British economy affording it significant influence over British foreign policy.
Even after a High Court judge in 2016 implicated President Putin directly in
the Litvinenko murder London has done little or nothing to prevent the flow of
dodgy ‘no questions asked’ Russian money into London, and would probably be
loath to do so even now. The EU? Even if the EU’s Common Foreign and Security
Policy amounted to more than an extended budget for think-tank meetings London
is hardly the flavour of the month in Brussels and is unlikely to get much
support therein.

What about direct
retaliatory action? London is certainly not in the business of poisoning people
on foreign soil, whatever RT, Sputnik
et al might imply.Could Britain mount
some form of retaliatory cyber-attack?This is unlikely. First, Britain is only in the process of developing an
offensive cyber warfare capability. Second, the failure of successive British
governments to ‘harden’ Britain’s critical infrastructure makes the country
uniquely vulnerable to a whole host of attacks Moscow has been working up for
some time, and which now extend across the twenty-first century hybrid war,
cyber war, hyper war spectrum.

Policy
Responses?

If the
ability and capacity of London to retaliate is limited what about policy
options?Here, if ‘Whiteminster’
(Westminster and Whitehall combined) for once responds with a) some backbone;
and b) investment in new capability, capacity and structures the attack could
be the catalyst for Britain to finally abandon its appalling ‘policy’ of
recognising only as much threat as HM Treasury says it can afford. Rather,
Britain should move to establish a new principle in its dealings with Russia: if
Moscow attacks, London responds with policy across the conflict spectrum and as
part of a new, twenty-first century concept of escalation.

At the lower
end of escalation London could move to re-capitalise the Russian-speaking
service of the BBC World Service and start again to fully engage/interfere in
Russian domestic affairs. Britain could also move faster to balance the
counter-terrorism focus of its Secret Intelligence Service with a born-again counter-Russia
capability – both offensive intelligence and counter-intelligence.

London’s strategic
blindness has also left Britain far too vulnerable to externally-induced
chaos.Therefore, London should also
begin the systematic hardening of critical infrastructures from cyber and
actual attack.If past Russian
tradecraft is anything to go by there is likely to be a significant number of well-placed
Russian sleeper agents in Britain ready to help foster such chaos.

Above all, and
by way of considered policy response, London needs to strike a new balance
between the protection of its people and its ability to project coercive power,
particularly within NATO.Deductively, it
is in the specific realm of defence policy that London should respond most
forcefully. For too long successive British governments have played at coercion
as Whiteminster has steadily retreated from strategic realism into strategic political
correctness. Moscow has observed this Little
Britain retreat with contempt.

Therefore,
Prime Minister May should announce as a direct response to this attack that
Britain will move to prevent Russia’s continuing ability to carry out the low-level
war it is currently conducting at Britain’s many seams. Critically, in addition
to strengthening the resilience of British society to attack London should also
announce an immediate increase of its defence budget to 2.5% GDP to close the
massive gap that has opened up between the stated missions of the British armed
forces and their ability to undertake them.That such an increase would be the direct consequence of Russian action
would not only be something Moscow would understand, it would also be an
unintended consequence that Moscow would not welcome. After all, it takes two
to message.

Britain must
prove it can still sting

If London’s response
to this attack is that it finally gets serious about security and defence and
demonstrates to Moscow that there is a price to pay for its aggressive and unlawful
actions then, just then, Russia too might want to talk.Ironically, only then will the Foreign Office’s
preferred policy of talking to Moscow, rather than isolating or threatening it,
have any chance of success. Sorry,
Foreign Office, speaking softly, carrying a little stick, and turning a
well-educated blind eye will no longer do.

What
frustrates me most about my country is the false Little Britain narrative that
not only have so many Britons bought into, but which Moscow exploits.If one combines economic and military power
with the experience and systems of engagement Britain should still be able to
sting and sting hard. Sometimes in international relations, particularly when
dealing with autocrats, democracies must have the proven ability to sting.We do not as yet live in Utopia. However, only
if Whiteminster stops behaving like a strategic amoeba, re-injects some
strategic backbone into its policy and responses, and makes an adversary pay a
price for such an attack will Britain stop this kind of attack.

Hard at times
though it is to believe Britain is still a top five world power but needs to
start behaving again like one.As for Mr
Peskov, Britain might well be a small island, but it is a bloody powerful one
with an economy twice the size of Russia’s. Now is the moment for Moscow to be
reminded of that fact…should, of course, it is demonstrated that Moscow was complicit
in some way in the Skripal attack.

Tuesday, 6 March 2018

Alphen,
Netherlands. 6 March. Two things concern me about President Xi Jingping’s China
this week and can best be summarised as a lot of rubber-stamping. First, at a
meeting this week the rubber-stamp National People’s Congress is expected to
scrap presidential term limits. Second, the Congress will further rubber-stamp
the decision of President Xi to further increase the Chinese defence budget by
8.1% to an official $175 billion per annum.Whilst that figure pales alongside the $600 billion or so the US spends each
year on defence, China’s actual defence expenditure is probably far higher than
the official figure suggests, as many new defence projects are not included in
the defence budget.

President
Xi’s move to enshrine himself as President-for-Life at least has a greater ring
of political honesty to it than the electoral manipulations of that other
strategic autocrat-for-life Russia’s President Putin.Still, past experience in China and elsewhere
suggests this landmark decision does not bode well for the Celestial Empire,
the Asia-Pacific region, or the wider world.Indeed, President Xi’s consolidation of his personal power in the
age-old name of ‘stability’ suggests not only the creation of a new power dynasty
in China, but also hints at a return to the bad old days under Chairman Mao when
de facto one man rule led to deadly extremes,
such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

Political
Legitimacy Chinese Style

Among
contemporary China’s many achievements are its relative stability and growing
prosperity. Since the 1989 massacre of students in Tiananmen Square the Chinese
Communist Party has also enjoyed a strange (by Western standards) kind of
political legitimacy.This was achieved
by offering the burgeoning Chinese middle class prosperity in return for their unquestioning
acceptance of the Party’s political supremacy.Such ‘legitimacy’ has been further reinforced by strict term limits on
office for the procession of grey men who have led China in the intervening
years. Now, with President Xi’s power grab (for that is what it is) that
legitimacy is again open to question, and it will be interesting to see how a
changing China adapts.

For a time
President Xi’s personal supremacy may well buttress ‘stability’ within China.
However, past experience in China, the Soviet Union/Russia and elsewhere
suggests that over time such a retreat from what limited political legitimacy existed
in China will be covered by the fostering of a personality cult which will
doubtless increase the distance between this ‘Princeling of the Party’ and the
people. There is also a danger that Xi’s move will further reinforce a tendency
towards more nationalism and militarism in Beijing.

A Revolution
in Chinese Military Affairs

President
Xi’s power base is, and has always been the People’s Liberation Army or PLA.
For decades the Chinese armed forces were essentially designed to assure the control
of the Party within China, and assure the borders from threats without China.China’s foreign military adventures were
relatively limited, strategically-constrained and close to China itself.Then Peking intervened in the Korean War in
1950 against US-led United Nations forces, fought and won a short border war
with India in 1962, and in 1969 entered a border conflict with its ‘fraternal’
Communist partner, the Soviet Union. Chinese forces also entered Cambodia and
Vietnam in the late 1970s.Today,
China’s strategic ambitions extend far beyond its neighbouring region, as exemplified
by Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

A revolution
in Chinese military affairs is also underway. Beijing’s now smaller (2 million),
leaner and more agile Armed Forces are currently taking possession of a whole
raft of power projection military capabilities, including new aircraft carriers
and nuclear attack submarines, whilst at the same time exploiting space-based
and other advanced technologies, such as cyber and artificial intelligence.The People’s Liberation Navy is fast
developing into the main regional challenger to the United States Navy. The PLN
also has global ambitions, as the joint 2016 exercise in the Baltic Sea with
the Russian Navy revealed.Like the
emergence of Kaiser Wilhelm’s Imperial Germany Navy from 1898 onwards which had
but one purpose, to challenge the might of the then Royal Navy, it is clear
that the PLN is also being prepared with one military-strategic purpose in mind;
if Beijing so decides to one day fight and defeat the United States Navy.

Now, China has as much right to invest in such forces as any
Western country. However, the strategy behind such investments must be of
concern to both neighbours and the rest of us. First, Beijing has shown scant
‘might is right’ regard for international law by employing a host of spurious
claims to illegally-seize and militarise a string of islands in the South China
Sea.The strategic aim is clear; to turn
one of the most lucrative trading routes in the world into China’s Mare Nostrum.Next month, like something out of a Gilbert
and Sullivan operetta, the ageing Royal Navy Type-23 frigate HMS Sutherland will conduct a ‘freedom
of navigation’ exercise in the South China Sea. Regrettably, and in spite of
some talk of a new Asia-Pacific focussed Franco-British alliance, far from
being impressed the Chinese will no doubt conclude it is an exercise in British
strategic pretence, and that the under-funded Royal Navy poses little or no
threat to China. Expect Beijing to ignore the ship.

Chinese Might
is not always Right

However, it
is the mid-to-long term consequences of President Xi’s ‘might is right’
strategy both at home and abroad that should most concern the West. History
suggests that autocratic, one-man regimes sooner or later resort to adventurism
when the political and economic going inevitably gets tough. This is what
President Putin did when he attacked Ukraine in 2014 after falling oil and gas
prices undermined his domestic political and economic strategy and threatened
the Kremlin’s control.

For as long
as the Chinese Communist Party continues to deliver prosperity to the Chinese
middle class and the wider country it is likely that the Party’s grip on power
will endure.And, as long as China can
continue to feed off Western technologies via strategic investments in companies
in debt-ridden European and other countries, China will see no reason to become
overly aggressive. And yet there are clear dangers implied by such investments.
Last week it was discovered that Chinese investment in a small British
semi-conductor company may have helped Beijing to develop a new naval ‘super-gun’
that will soon pose a distinct threat to US carrier battlegroups.

The dilemma
for Beijing, as one Chinese official once told me during a visit, is that China
has to grow at at least 8% per annum simply for the economy and prosperity to
stand still. Sooner or later such growth will cease, a prospect made more
likely by China’s burgeoning corporate debt. Sooner or later the militarised super-presidency
of President-for-Life Xi could well seek to bolster its power domestically by
further embellishing its nationalist credentials. In such circumstances Taiwan
(the Crimea of Asia-Pacific?) would be first in the firing line, closely
followed by Japan and South Korea, something that that other President-for-Life
Kim Jong-un has no doubt considered.

Chairman Xi’s
Bipolar Disorder?

There is
another even greater danger, or rather combination of dangers that really worry
me about President Xi’s power-grab, which could threaten the world order.The defining strategic relationship for much
of the twenty-first century will be that between the United States and
China.They are the two power poles
around which other lesser powers are already coalesced or coalescing.It is a complex relationship and that could
spawn a dangerous bipolar (dis) order, particularly if China and Russia define
their relationship as inherently anti-Western.

In some respects
the world is already beginning to look eerily like Europe in the first decade
of the twentieth century when the Triple
Entente of the British, French and Russian Empires, ‘balanced’ the Dual Alliance of Imperial Germany and
the Austro-Hungarian Empire.Whilst this
was an essentially European-focused power struggle it had global reach because
of empire.Given the West itself is now
an idea rather than a place with liberal democracies the world-over, and
centred on the American system of alliances, the threat of systemic conflict
can no longer be ruled out. Indeed, whilst Russia may pose a regional threat to
certain NATO and EU members, in combination with China that threat becomes a
wholly different ball-game, particularly for the Americans.

It is a
threat compounded by the West itself. First, too many debt-ridden Europeans seem
only too willing to see the ‘opportunities’ afforded by rich China, but at the
same time refuse to recognise the risks that an increasingly autocratic and
aggressive China poses.Second,
President Trump seems more interested in disrupting the West than reinforcing
it.This most idiosyncratic of American
presidents this week decided to threaten trade wars with most of his major allies
so, apparently, he can secure an improved NAFTA. Sadly, at times the White
House seems more interested in disaggregating the very system of alliances that
helped make America great. Alliance which America will again need if Washington
is to reassert the very considered leadership that was, is, and always will be
the true source of American greatness.

A Global
Triple Track

Is war with
China inevitable? Certainly not. Having worked with seasoned diplomats and
practitioners over many years I have learnt that the expectation of the worst
is the surest fire way to guarantee it.And,
whilst I harbour profound concerns about the direction of travel of the Xi
regime, it is vital the West continues to talk to Beijing.Beijing is not simply a richer and more
powerful version of Putin’s Russia, and because a set of circumstance and
patterns of power occurred in the past they are by no means doomed to reassert
themselves in the future.

Rather,
Americans and Europeans should seek strategic balance in their respective
engagements with Beijing.Deterrence,
defence and dialogue were the triple themes in a narrative that emphasised just
such a need for strategic balance in the GLOBSEC NATO Adaptation Initiative, for
which I had the honour to be Lead Writer.Realising such balance demands that Europeans see their security and
defence not just in regional, but global terms. It also demands of Europeans a
willingness to better support, albeit not uncritically, Washington’s lead in
dealing with Xi’s China if they want the Americans to continue to underpin
Europe’s own security and defence.

All of the above will certainly demand that
Europeans finally get serious about their twenty-first century defence and invest
sensibly, although not excessively, in such a defence.Equally, Europeans also have something to
contribute in ensuring Xi’s China maintains a nuanced understanding of the
contemporary West. Indeed, it is precisely the bloc-forming experience of
Europeans prior to the First and Second World Wars, and during the Cold War
that places Europeans in a responsible position to promote dialogue with China,
whatever past imperial insults Europeans have committed.

What is
happening in Beijing this week is a cause for concern. Equally, Beijing is
inherently cautious and remains for the moment open to dialogue, particularly
if it believes an adversary respects its legitimate interests and has the power
and coherence to counter its own ambitions.

Therefore, President
Xi’s bipolar disorder is not a given.However, to paraphrase one of the Roosevelt’s the global West together,
Europeans included, should speak softly, politely and firmly to President Xi, and
help America carry not just its big stick, but its many burdens.It would also help if America learnt again to
speak softly. Over to you, Mr President.

Friday, 2 March 2018

“The highest pivot of virtue is to
possess boundless power without abusing it”.

Thomas Babington MacCauley, 1stBaron
MacCauley

Abstract: This brief personal analysis paper examines why it is so
hard to agree a Brexit settlement. It considers the challenges through the lens
of two issues; the post-Brexit inner-Irish border and the aims and strategy of
the European Commission. The analysis concludes by suggesting that Tony Blair’s
call for a bespoke deal to keep Britain in the EU is the only way to stop
Brexit, but for all the reasons discussed below it is extremely unlikely
Britain would or could be offered such a deal.

The Battle of Brexit

Brexit is at its inevitable schwerpunkt when fudge can no
longer be fudged, and choices have to be made. Today, British Prime Minister
May will lay out five tests for Brexit which will essentially say that
Britain’s decision to leave the EU must be respected, frictionless trade with
the EU must be maintained, London decides which of the four fundamental EU
freedoms (goods, people, services and capital) London will observe, with any
disputes to be decided not solely by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

This week the real Battle of Brexit broke out. On one side is a hard-line,
unelected, and effectively unaccountable European Commission committed to its
self-appointed political role to drive towards some form of European
Federation. On the other side, is a top five world power that is seeking to
leave the European Union, not least because of profound unease in many of its
quarters about the EU’s attitude to democracy, legitimacy and the sovereign
will of the people. In the middle is a people appalled by the divisions within
its leading political class, and increasingly irritated by the hard-line stance
of Brussels. The Battle of Brexit is also a battle fought through proxies, but
it is nevertheless an existential battle not only about who rules ‘Europe’, but
the future of Europe.

The publication this week of TF50
(2018) 33 or European
Commission Draft Withdrawal Agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European
Atomic Energy Agreement is far more than a dry technical, bureaucratic
document. Rather, it firmly establishes the strategic and political
battle-lines between a European Commission that is playing very hard-ball
indeed over Brexit, and a British Government that has thus far avoided setting
out anything that might be called a negotiating position. This is because the
May Government is unable to agree one, and she is too weak to impose one. Born
of a mix of ideological fundamentalism and frustration the Draft Agreement is
thus deliberately designed to put Theresa May in a position where she has no
option other than to say what she wants. There are two issues upon which this
analysis will focus, one of which demonstrates the lack of any political will
to agree a settlement, and the other explains why; the Brexit Irish Question
and the aims and strategy of the European Commission.

The Irish Tail Wagging the British Dog?

In the 1980s I spent time in
Northern Ireland and I am acutely sensitive to Britain’s tarnished, at times
appalling history on the island of Ireland. My respect for Ireland and the
Irish people runs deep, and I remain firm in my belief that should the majority
of people in the north of Ireland ever vote to become part of the Republic I
would honour such a decision. As someone intelligent said to me recently,
“Ireland is like an innocent passer-by walking down a street in a storm who
suddenly gets drenched by a bloody big, poorly-driven lorry driving through a
puddle of its own making”.

What is fast becoming known as the Irish Question amidst calls for
a ‘common regulatory area’ on the island of Ireland, perhaps shine the best
light on the politics of the Draft Agreement. As such it reflects as much
Brussels’ legitimate frustration with a hitherto hopeless London, as it implies
any power grab on a part of the United Kingdom. Yes, Brexit is complicated, but
it is being made far more complicated by Theresa May’s lack of leadership, a
Cabinet so divided they probably could not even agree on the time of day when
it comes to Brexit, and a negotiating team most of whom give the strong
impression they would prefer to be batting for the other side. When historians
come to write about the sordid tale that is Brexit they will doubtless conclude
that London conducted perhaps the worst set of negotiations in Britain’s long
history.

With the Battle of Brexit now
turning nasty some accuse the Commission of diverging significantly from at
least the spirit of the December Joint Agreement, which agreed the overall cost
to Britain of its pending departure from the EU. Others suggest the Commission
even wants to ‘annex’ Northern Ireland. In fact, the text of the Joint
Agreement is pretty clear. “In the absence [my italics] of
agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those
rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future,
support North-South cooperation, the all island economy and the protection of
the 1998 [Belfast] Agreement. A second sentence states that, “In all circumstances,
the United Kingdom [not
the EU] will continue to ensure the same unfettered access for Northern
Ireland's businesses to the whole of the United Kingdom internal market”. In
other words, only if the UK fails to come up with a solution to the Irish
Question would Northern Ireland remain fully aligned with existing EU
obligations. It is hard not to conclude that in her pre-Christmas December
desperation to complete so-called Phase One negotiations, and agree the
‘divorce bill’, Theresa May simply gave away too much. The Draft Agreement
simply translates that concession into legalese.

However, as with all issues Northern Ireland there is a wider
security context against which Brexit must be considered. The security and
stability of Northern Ireland, and in particular the April 1998 Belfast or Good
Friday Agreement (GFA), has been the cornerstone of the peace process. Whilst
the EU was not a signatory to the GFA the political and economic context
provided by the Union undoubtedly played a role in reducing the logic of Sinn
Fein/IRA’s armed struggle against Britain, even if the critical moment in the
peace process was not 1998, but 911. After the attacks by al Qaeda on
the US, and Tony Blair’s commitment of immediate British support for the Bush
administration in the Global War on Terror, savvy Republican political leaders
such as Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness quickly realised they they would lose
the support of their American backers if they continued to attack British
troops fighting alongside their American counterparts in Afghanistan against
Osama bin Laden.

The Commission case, and indeed that of the Varadkar government in
Dublin, rests upon an assumption that Northern Ireland is not really part of
the United Kingdom. It is. The majority of the people of Northern Ireland have
not as yet indicated a desire to leave the United Kingdom and become part of
the Republic. In other words Northern Ireland is, and will remain for the
foreseeable future, part of the United Kingdom, whatever the necessary fudge of
the Belfast Agreement. Theresa May was thus correct to say this week in
Parliament that no British prime minister could ever accept an agreement that
threatens the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom, just as she is
correct to assert that no hard border need be re-imposed on the island of
Ireland.

Getting Over the Border

So, what is the answer to the
Irish Question? Over many years between 1984 and 2007 I either lived or stayed
in Switzerland. In 2011 Switzerland
joined the Schengen Zone and in practice accepted the ‘acquis’ of a borderless
European Union. However, for many years prior to 2011 there were many border
crossings between France and Switzerland that were rarely ever manned. In other
words, the border between Switzerland and France was a ‘fudge’, albeit a
successful fudge. It is precisely such a fudge that Britain and the EU could
‘craft’ if there was the political will so to do. It is precisely the lack of
such will on the part of Brussels that is preventing such a fudge.

Let me be specific. I have just finished reading a report entitled Smart Border 2.0;
avoiding a Hard Border on the Island of Ireland for Customs Control and the
Free Movement of Persons. The paper was published in November 2017 and
written by Leo Karlsson, the former Director of the World Customs Organisation,
having been commissioned by the European Parliament.

Forgive me for
quoting this report at length, but it is important. The paper states: “This study,
commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’
Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the AFCO Committee,
provides background on cross-border movement and trade between Northern Ireland
and Ireland and identifies international standards and best practices and
technologies that can be used to avoid a ‘hard’ border as well as case studies
that provide insights into creating a smooth border experience. The technical
solution provided is based on innovative approaches with a focus on
cooperation, best practices and technology that is independent of any political
agreements on the UK’s exit from the EU, and offers a template for future UK-EU
border relationships”.

The paper goes on: “There have been significant developments around the world in
creating ‘smart borders’ that bring together international standards and best
practices and new technologies to create low-friction borders that support that
fast and secure movement of persons and goods. Standards and best practices
such as domestic and cross-border coordinated border management as well as
trusted trader and trusted traveller programs can significantly reduce
compliance requirements and make borders almost friction free. Customs and
other border control practices that keep the border open, such as release
before clearance, deferred duty payments and clearance away from the border,
also help keep the border free of traffic and speed up or even remove the need
for processing. Technologies such as automatic number plate recognition,
enhanced driver's licenses, bar-code scanning and the use of smartphone apps
can also have a significant impact by reducing paperwork and allowing pre- or
on-arrival release, which can reduce or even eliminate the need to stop or
undergo checks. Many of these measures have been introduced at borders across
the world.

At both the Norway-Sweden border
and the Canada-US border, low friction borders have been created through a
focus on sharing of both data and facilities, the creation of an electronic
environment for trade and travel and the use of modern technologies. Both
Australia and New Zealand have also focused on utilising technology, in
particular bio-metrics, to speed-up the movement of citizens between their
respective countries. In developing a solution for the Irish border, there is
an opportunity to develop a friction free border building on international
standards and best practices, technology and insights from other
jurisdictions”.

In other words, the only real barriers to solving the
inner-Ireland border questions are the willingness to enact a fudge, and the
time it would take to install the Karlsson system. And, of course, the
political will so to do.

The Aims and Strategy of the Commission

This brings me to the second part of this analysis; why the
European Commission, claiming to act on behalf of the whole of the EU, is
determined to prevent the ‘pragmatic’ solution Michel Barnier repeatedly refers
to? To answer that question one must analyse the Brexit aims and strategy of
the Commission. The simple answer to the question is that the Commission is
simply not interested in a working solution to Brexit because such a solution
could imply that other member-states might make a similar choice if the cost is
not too great.

Indeed, for the Commission the
Brexit negotiations are not really about the British. Rather, it is a struggle
within the EU over precedent, primacy, pre-eminence and power between the
European Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament. The aim
of the Commission is to drive Europeans towards some form of European
Federation. During my time as Senior Fellow at the EU Institute for Security
Studies when I visited the Commission in Brussels I was struck often by the
extent to which those who occupy the New Berlaymont see themselves as political
Jesuits; committed to not only uphold the True Faith, but enforce it.

As with all such political institutions the primary aim is to render ever more
power unto itself and, in so doing, eradicate any danger of dissent. One aspect
of that aim is to eradicate democracy from the high politics of the EU in the
form of national referenda, and thus drive towards ‘ever closer union’ as
defined (and initiated) by the Commission. As such Brexit represents an
existential threat to the True Faith of Euro-Federalism. To protect its mission
the Commission must either over-turn the Brexit vote (preferred Commission
option), or by making the cost of Brexit so high, deter any other Member-State
from ever again contemplating withdrawal.

The Commission claims it is accountable to the European Council and the
European Parliament. In practice, as ‘the only body paid to think European’ the
powers of the Commission go far beyond the apparent limits of its competences. The
2009 Treaty of Lisbon imbued the Commission with the ability to initiate
policy, and in so doing enabled it to occupy the powerful legal and political
space between an international treaty and a domestic constitution that is the
Lisbon Treaty. The Commission has also mastered far more effectively than any
Member-State the treaty-constitutional uplands of the Union. This has enabled
the Commission to often and effectively manipulate the Council, particularly if
it aligns itself with an increasingly dominant Germany, and to use the European
Parliament as a rubber-stamping agency for the Commission’s vision of ‘ever
closer Union’.

Naturally, ‘ever more Europe’ means ever more Commission, in
particular the permanent secretariat now under the leadership of the new German
Secretary-General and ultra-hard line Euro-federalist Martin Selmayr, who last
week was mysteriously, and somewhat suspiciously, promoted from being Juncker’s
chef de cabinet to being the Commissions top permanent civil servant.
Even the European Parliament’s transparency ‘czar’ has expressed concerns about
the manner of Selmayr’s promotion.

The Commission’s Brexit strategy
is thus clear; present an utterly inflexible negotiating position as
‘reasonable’, and block off any ‘escape’ route that the British Government
might seek via fudge that might lead to something like an equitable, working
future relationship.

Analysis versus Instinct

Even though I have seen Brussels close-up I still decided to
campaign for Remain during the Brexit referendum, even though it was against my
better instinct. Indeed, it was only after an exhaustive analysis of the EU and
Britain’s relationship and place within it that I made my final decision. On
balance, I assumed, given the growing geopolitical threats faced by states to
the east and south of Europe, and in spite of my deep and abiding concerns
about the dangerous retreat from meaningful democracy in the EU, I came out for
Remain. I saw myself as a Big Picture Remainer, someone who had carefully
considered where best to exercise Britain still-considerable influence and
power within the wider strategic context of a Europe under growing threat. And, in spite of my concerns about the EU I
accepted the idea that the EU still had a vital role to play in preserving
peace within Europe.

Even with the June 2016 vote to leave I still assumed that the
subsequent Brexit negotiations whilst hard would be carried out in a manner
respectful of the legitimate democratic choice the British people had made. How
wrong I was. The outcome of this disaster is now becoming clear: Britain will
be much weakened by Brexit, and the EU, rather than being the free associations
of democracies in which I once believed deeply, has been revealed as a vengeful
empire run by an elite ‘monastic’ bureaucracy in which the only place for
democracy and the people is to vote for the powerless and the meaningless.

Hard Sovereignty versus Soft Sovereignty

To conclude, the Battle of Brexit is not about trade, whatever the
Labour Party or the Liberal Democrats like to pretend. Brexit is about where
power resides and who governs us. In which case it is a struggle for all
Europeans and of which all Europeans need to be aware.

This is because Brexit is not
about now, it is about who really has the power to govern Europeans ten,
twenty, thirty years hence, and whether the EU really is a free association of
sovereign, democratic states, or a federation effectively ruled by an elite
cabal. In other words, these are questions that whilst they can be delayed
cannot be fudged indefinitely if Britain, and the rest of Europe, are not to
slide into some form of soft authoritarianism epitomised by the likes of
Barnier and Selmayr. Sadly, Theresa May’s inability to either understand
strategy or apply big power means she is incapable of anything but fudge.

That is why with the Draft Agreement the Commission is in effect
offering the British people a Hobson’s Choice: hard Brexit and effectively lose
Northern Ireland, or a Brexit so soft that Britain does not leave the EU at
all. Rather, it becomes to all intents and purposes a colony. Or, to put it at
its most romantic (and here is the irony) the first province of the new European
Federation.

As a Remain-backing Briton I
cannot, nor will I ever accept such a ‘choice’. Read carefully the speeches
this week made by Sir John Major and Tony Blair and my sense is neither do
they. Rather, they remain hopeful a) EU Member-States can again re-establish
their supremacy in the EU; b) the Member-States can do so without the former
Franco-German Axis morphing ever more into German domination; and c) Britain
can re-exert more influence over the EU, and indeed the French and Germans within
the EU than at any time since Britain joined in 1973. Give me the hope of
realising such a vision and I would actively campaign for it.

Ironically, Blair’s speech this week in Brussels actually mirrored
what I said in Berlin a couple of weeks ago (naturally, I was first); the only
way to stop Brexit is to offer the British an entirely new deal that would
enable the British people to vote again on Brexit, albeit on a different
question; will you accept British membership of a reformed EU with a special
status for Britain?

Sadly, I think it is too late for
that. For all the reasons I outline above the denizens of the New Berlaymont
would rather die fighting in the trenches of Euro-federalism than accept a
compromise that would, to all intents and purposes, end their dream of just
such a federated Europe. Moreover, to convince the British people to change
their minds would take far more than the kind of dupe used to make the French,
Dutch and Irish people ‘change their minds’ over the then EU Constitutional
Treaty. The failure of the British Government’s Project Fear prior to
the June 2016 Brexit referendum demonstrates all too clearly a people that are
not easily fobbed off.

Therefore, given the appalling choice available to me, and with
genuine regret, if the worst of all post-Brexit worlds came to the worst I would
prefer Britain break cleanly with the EU fully accepting the inevitable cost to
Britain’s economy, if not to Britain’s democracy. Resistance is never futile,
and the Commission needs to understand that it must accept the legitimacy of
Brexit, just as much as London, and the British people, must accept the cost of
it.

There is one final thought I wish to impart in this personal
analysis. There are those on the Continent who somehow believe they could
countenance the attack on the integrity of the United Kingdom that the
Commission is mounting and yet seem to believe that such an attack would have
no implications for the support of Britain in the defence of their own
countries through NATO. Should the Commission succeed in its efforts to weaken
the UK over Brexit the British people would have little interest in defending
those in whose name such attack was mounted. And, I for one, would be only too
happy to help to make that clear.

Monday, 26 February 2018

Morning All! It is my pleasure to announce the publication of a new article in the excellent NATO Review. Entitled Adapting NATO to an Unpredictable and Fast-Changing World, the piece is (of course) brilliant and unbelievably well-priced (free!).

Building on the GLOBSEC NATO Adaptation Report which was published in late November, and for which I was lead writer, the article scrupulously lays out the main findings of the report. The Steering Committee I served comprised people who really know that their NATO: Generals John Allen and Wolf Langheld (former NATO commanders), Ambassador Sandy Vershbow (former US Ambassador to Moscow and NATO Deputy Secretary-General), Admiral Giampaolo di Paola (former Italian Minister of Defence and Chairman of the NATO Military Committee) and Ambassador Tomas Valacek (former Slovak Ambassador to the North Atlantic Council).

The link to the GLOBSEC NATO Final Adaptation Report is: https://www.globsec.org/news/globsec-nato-adaptation-initiative-final-report/

The main message from the report and the article? “NATO leaders should
commission a strategy review, which might be embodied in a new Strategic
Concept. NATO needs a forward-looking strategy that sets out how the Alliance
will meet the challenges of an unpredictable and fast-changing world”. Have a good day!Julian Lindley-French

Thursday, 22 February 2018

Regular
readers of this missive know that it is not my normal practice to post a blog a
day. I am too busy for that.Still, this
morning I sent a memo to a very senior friend and colleague who had asked me to
expand my thinking on a new concept of deterrence outlined in my blog of 13
February entitled MAD Again? Competing in
the New Strategic Arms Race.Therefore,
given I am grappling with a range of ideas on the future of deterrence I
thought I might try and provoke a wider debate in the strategy community by
sharing the memo with you.

Headline:

My aim
is to arrive at a new concept of deterrence by which new and emerging non-nuclear
technologies could be 'bundled' and applied via new strategy and new thinking
to generate deterrent effect across the conflict spectrum in conjunction with
existing Alliance conventional and nuclear capabilities and postures.

THEREFORE, if deterrence is an effect the question I
am posing is thus: could the Alliance generate the same or similar deterrent
effect as nuclear escalation across the low to high yield, SRM to ICBM nuclear
spectrum by matching new strategy with new non-nuclear technology, rather than
return to a form of mutuallyassured nuclear destruction or MAD-ness?

Assumptions:

1.I am concerned that if we simply follow the Russians by matching nuclear
system for system - SRMs, MBRMs, IRBMs, ICBMs – that will not re-set a ‘strategic
balance’ and make the situation even more unstable by destroying treaty
frameworks and with it arms control.

2.By introducing new nuclear systems into Europe such a response could
lead to similar if not more intense 'populism' to that prior to signing of the 1987
Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty when the Carter administration wanted
to introduce enhanced radiation weapons (ERW) in the 1970s, and deployed Cruise
and Pershing 2s in the 1980s, to match Soviet SS20s.

3.Such a popular 'revolt' would cause significant political strains within
the polis of already fragile political systems in many European countries,
tense after many years of austerity etc., and would probably split NATO.

4.By introducing Iskandrs, SS-29, RS
28, enhanced A2/AD, advanced nuclear-armed submarines etc. that is
precisely the political calculation Moscow has made. Indeed, such deployments
are part of Moscow’s strategy to offset its relative weakness by exploiting the
'strengths' of what the Putin regimes sees as a far more powerful, but divided
adversary. Given that an adversarial relationship with much of the West is
central to the Kremlin's domestic justification of power it is unlikely that
such a strategy is going to change soon.

New Concept of Deterrence Effects?

My
assertion on deterrence effects can be thus summarised: deterrence is an effect
not a technology or even a capability, even if it is dependent on both. Indeed,
technology is merely a means to a deterrence end. Since the 1950s deterrence
has been dominated by nuclear experts because for decades what might be called 'strategic deterrence' has essentially been about balancing nuclear systems of
mass destruction. Therefore, every nuclear 'hammer' has, by and large, been matched by a matching nuclear 'hammer'. The recent US Nuclear Posture Review
was a continuation of that tradition.

However,
our November 2017 report (GLOBSEC NATO Adaptation Report https://www.globsec.org/news/globsec-nato-adaptation-initiative-gnai/)
rightly identified new forms of warfare, and new technologies and new
strategies IN future war, precisely to reduce the threat of such warfare - from
hybrid to hyper via cyber war as we deemed it. In that context, si vis pacem para bellum (‘if you want
peace prepare for war’) requires entirely new thinking (si vis pacem bellum cogita, or If you want peace think about war) about strategy, technology, capability and
effects.This is not least because such
new thinking would play to ‘our’ strengths and thus enable the Alliance to set
the deterrence agenda, not simply respond to agendas set elsewhere.

Hypothesis

Given my assumptions my central hypothesis is thus:

1. The
primary weakness of the Alliance deterrence posture is the lack of a heavy
'conventional' reserve force able to support front-line states in strength,
quickly, and across a broad conflict spectrum in a crisis and during an
emergency, if the threat comes from several directions at once.

2. Such
threats would see an attack from Russia to the east, chaos and terrorism to the
south of the Alliance, and attacks within Alliance states, allied to
sophisticated and co-ordinated efforts to generate popular discord via disinformation and attacks on critical infrstructures, and thus undermine an effective and coherent response.

3. Such
a threat would be dangerously exacerbated if the US was also engaged
simultaneously in a major crisis elsewhere, such as in Asia-Pacific.

4. Even
if the Americans, Canadians, and possibly the British, could despatch a heavy
reserve force simultaneously to the East, North and South of NATO's European
theatre the infrastructures to transfer such forces across the Atlantic/Channel
quickly, receive them effectively and efficiently, and then transport them rapidly
into the Area of Operations (AOO) simply do not exist.

5. Much
of the ‘Main Force’ assigned to the NATO Command Structure either exists only
on paper, or is incapable of acting (see “German Army Problems ‘dramatically bad’”
www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43134896)

6. To
offset what I call the 'deterrence gap or deficit' the reflex tends to be to
resort to nuclear weapons. Indeed, first and early use of such weapons was
the central assumption of Alliance deterrence during the Cold War on NATO's
Central Front when our forces were a) not as extended as far to the east as
they are now; and b) the south was relatively more stable, thus enabling a vaguely
credible conventional Main Effort.

7.
Resorting early to nuclear escalation in Alliance defence strategy would be a
political trap for all the reasons I explain above. The political consequences
for strategy could thus be the weakening of political solidarity
upon which credible deterrence and defence stands at the Schwerpunkt
or decisive climax of a pre-war crisis, dangerously weakening, not strengthening, Alliance deterrence.

Desired
Deterrence Outcomes?

1.My desired deterrence outcome is a natural follow on to our NATO
Adaptation Report. The strategic 'bandwidth' that could be applied to
generating credible deterrence seems to be expanding exponentially due to
emerging technologies.

3.Such technologies should be allied to new thinking on the possible application of critically disruptive strategies and
technologies able to exploit systematically the seams that exist with an
adversary - societal, political, economic, as well as critical infrastructure
destruction and disruption.

4.The legitimate counter-argument would be to question the applicability of such technologies
and the time it would take to develop and deploy them, not least because NATO
Europe is so bad at fielding times for new systems.

More
thinking and work needs to be done on a new concept of deterrence effects, which
I will do. However, to my mind what is urgently needed is that such new
thinking takes place, and not only by me.

About Me

Julian Lindley-French is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC. An internationally-recognised strategic analyst, advisor and author he was formerly Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy,and Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden. He is a Fellow of Respublica in London, and a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.
Latest books: The Oxford Handbook on War 2014 (Paperback) (2014; 709 pages). (Oxford: Oxford University Press) & "Little Britain? Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power". (www.amazon.com)
The Friendly-Clinch Health Warning: The views contained herein are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution.